Software
Zoom launches the platform with paying activities and new third party product integrations.
Videoconferencing app Zoom is aiming to keep its lock-down momentum running with two huge new features: a marketplace called OnZoom that will allow users to plan and monetize virtual activities, and new ways for business apps like Asana and Box to directly incorporate their products into the next Zoom call.
First of all, onZoom. This is a "event discovery and monetization" site that will make it easy to locate simulated experiences in a wide variety of genres, says Zoom — from culinary lessons to seminars to stand-up and more. Basically, any event or operation that you might have already been doing with Zoom (or other video conferencing software) will be available with built-in ticket distribution tools, schedules, and promotions.
Organizers will require a premium Zoom account to hold activities, but they can be watched by anybody. However, the number of participants would be reduced to a cap of 1,000 attendees through the organizer's paying account.
Payments can be collected by PayPal or by credit card, and tickets for events will be bought as gifts. OnZoom is currently available as a trial in the US and will spread internationally sometime in 2021.
Less interesting but more realistic is Zoom 's introduction of third party applications directly into calls. This ensures that you can do stuff like access tasks in Asana or documents saved in Dropbox without going to another browser. In an act of insufferable corporate naming, Zoom has agreed to call these third-party integrations "Zapps," but we're going to continue to ignore that.
Zoom says more than 35 businesses are developing such applications, including Asana, Atlassian, Box, Cameo, Chorus, Coda, Coursera, Docket, Dot Collector, Dropbox, Gong, Hubspot, Kahoot, Kaltura, LoomieLive, LucidSpark, Miro, Mural, PagerDuty, Pitch, Remix Labs, Rev, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Slido, Superhuman, SurveyMonkey, Thrive Global, Unsplash, Woven, Wrike, WW, and Zendesk. It’s not clear when each of these will be available.
Zapps help surface all the applications you need to be efficient and allow the free flow of knowledge between teams before, after, and after the meeting, the company said in a press release. Think of Zapps as an app store where you need it most — at a Zoom conference, talk, webinar, phone call, and even your email directory.
One interesting third-party incorporation here, among the normal corporate productivity suspects, is Kahoot — an educational tool that's popular in (and out of) schools to generate quizzes. Integrating Kahoot directly into Zoom could make the quiz experience smoother. So if you're going to lockdown this winter, you can at least use Kahoot's Zoom Zapp to organize a quick virtual quiz while the pandemic rages. What a planet we're living in.
